The present invention relates to a page flow, and more specifically, to a method and apparatus for normalizing a page flow into a portlet.
A page flow is a flow consisting of one or more pages (or webpages) which are linked together through navigation control to execute a specific business logic. The page flow allows to separate codes of the pages per se (i.e., user interface codes) from codes for the navigation control among the respective pages (i.e., navigation control codes), so that the user interface codes can be placed in any proper position in a JSP file, and the navigation control codes can be placed in a separate control file. In this way, the user interface codes and the navigation control codes may be developed by different persons, thereby achieving better development efficiency and effects. However, it is not easy for the page flow to be shared between different applications or integrated with an existing page flow.
Portlets are pluggable user interface components, and are managed and displayed by a portlet container. A plurality of portlets can be mashed up in one page to implement customization of the page. These portlets can communicate with each other, and use events to determine a user's operation path through a web application. The portlets further have the following characteristics: a single portlet can have multiple instances, in other words, the single portlet can appear on different pages within a single portal, or can appear on pages across multiple portals; the portlets are customizable, that is, they can be customized to meet demands of users; and the portlets constituting the page may be rendered to support a navigation state path by making URLs of the portlets contain navigation state information, i.e., state information about the page and all the portlets on the page. The above characteristics of the portlets render that the portlets have advantages of being easy to be shared between different applications, being easy to be integrated with an existing portal application, and the like.